LordRahl2 wrote to me: "Why not write about your experiences as a new player? I would really like to read that."

I'm not sure if anyone else shares Mr Rahl2's interest, but as he did ask the question I feel obliged to answer it.

About a week ago I was looking around for a new game to play. For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, I wanted to see if there were any good text adventure games out there. (For the truly curious, this thought came to me about 3 seconds after my Firefox Flash plugin crashed for the 7th time in as many days.) I have played in text-based simulations before, both PBM (play by mail) and PBP (play by post), as well as some PBeM and #irc-based games. And I've played online variants of Risk, Diplomacy, Catan, and so forth.

And so, about a week ago, I came across the Wikipedia list of games. It is outdated, and some games on the list are gone, and others are about as interesting as looking at multiple nested spreadsheets. I was about to quit on the list when I reached the listing for eRepublik, and that moment of finding something interesting simply because I persevered ... that moment sparked one of my first articles in here.

Now here's the funny thing. You will note I said 'a week ago' but I'm only dated as a 'new citizen' from this past weekend. (It is Wednesday evening here on the east coast of the U.S.) That is because-- and this is humbling to admit, so give me a moment here-- that is because I didn't sign up immediately. Because I simply had no idea what was going on.

I believe I clicked on the country of Brazil for about 15 minutes before I realized that the front page is NOT a list of the 5 starting countries. Yeah. You people reading this, most of you have been here for hundreds of days. Weeks, perhaps even months. You know where to go to find stuff; you know how to check your messages and alerts, and you know where to find your daily tasks and missions. However, this interface is-- and most of you know I speak from a kind place, a place of fairness and respect-- this eRepublik interface is a confusing mess. It's not intuitive, it is not easy to figure out, and even now a few days into the game... some of it still puzzles me.

So this was my experience in a nutshell: I was lost and confused. I know I did not find the wiki until the weekend, and I could not even fathom how to start the missions for a good two or three days into playing the game.

I don't like talking about this sort of experience as I'm the kind of guy to always get back up, dust myself off and keep moving forward. I fight for what I believe in, but I still try to be pleasant and respectful at the same time. But there's no denying this fact. I stared at the log-in screen for quite some time, kept clicking on Serbia and Argentina, Spain and Poland, and then went to bed.

Someday I may run a candidacy, and my opponent can say the following: 'Clint? Don't vote for him! He couldn't figure out how to even play the game the first time he looked at it!'

Hey man, I've also found eRepublik on Wikipedia. Thanks Clint on reminding me how hard was to start back in V1 and how easy was to quit. I suppose it still is. But after month or two I returned and it started, the love and hate relation with this game.

You are reading an article written by a citizen of eRepublik, an immersive multiplayer strategy game based on real life countries. Create your own character and help your country achieve its glory while establishing yourself as a war hero, renowned publisher or finance guru.